You’re starting out in the business world and you want to advertise, and you’ve decided after doing some research and analysis that Facebook is the place to be.

For startups and small business Facebook is the logical place to start out with your business advertising as there isn’t a huge risk with investment and it’s a simple way for even then smallest company to get some fairly incredible exposure really quickly.

While it might be an easy option for advertising your startup, there is a little more to it than setting up your ad, adding your credit card and sitting back to watch the leads and sales roll in.

Business owners need to make sure there are a stack of boxes ticked before their business ads really get traction. Things to consider before you kick off your business advertising include targeting, creating images with the correct dimensions for Facebook, running the right type of ad, demographics. and so much more.

Before you kick off, make sure you have a basic understanding of campaigns, ad sets, and ads. The 'campaigns' area of Facebook is the area that houses all of your ads, 'ad sets' are the targeted audiences that you might set up for each ad, and your 'ads' are live ads within your ad sets. Think of it as a series of steps of a babushka doll.

How To Set Up Facebook Ads That Will Make Your Business Stand Out

Once you understand campaigns, ad sets, and ads, here’s a few basic things to consider when you’re looking to create and optimize Facebook ads for your startup:

Set up Ads Manager for your ad campaign

You’ll need to find your way around the system and get a bit of an understanding of how it works. Basically, ads manager allows you to control all your ads in once central location and understand the stats, how much you’ve spent, allows you to edit and find out if the ads are working for your business

Select your ad objective

What are you trying to achieve exactly? Are you trying to increase conversions on your website, boost your posts, promote your page, increase engagement, get people to claim an offer, or get people to click on your website? There are plenty more objectives, but at this point you will need to outline what exactly you’re trying to achieve from the campaign. Selecting the objective helps Facebook to work out the best ad for you and will show you some options that would work to suit your needs.

Choose your target audience

This is where it gets really cool; in this step, you can target your audience to ensure that you are showing your ads to people located in specific geographical locations. You can be as broad or as specific if you like. If you’re a business that has a shop front or a café for example, you’re probably going to want to pinpoint your audience quite specifically however if you are a willing to be a little broader with the targeting of your audience you can do so in this step. Audience info includes location, age, gender, languages, interests, behaviors, and connections. Have a play around with these steps and you will get an indication of the audience definition in the dashboard on the right-hand side of your screen as well.

Set your advertising budget

Here’s the part when you outline the budget you want to spend for the campaign. You can set up a daily rate for your advertising or you can outline a budget for the entire campaign, whatever suits your marketing needs. For ongoing advertising, it’s simple to set up campaigns for a set amount of dollars per day. In this step, you can add in some advanced options such as scheduling your ads including hours of the day and days of the week, pricing and optimization, and delivery (this is more for time sensitive ads).

Creating your ad content Now you’re ready to start the process of setting up you business ad for your Facebook campaign. The ad allows you the function of adding in multiple images (called carousel) and also allows you to add

Now you’re ready to start the process of setting up your business ad for your Facebook campaign. The ad allows you the function of adding in multiple images (called carousel) and also allows you to add a link such as ‘Shop Now’, or ‘Sign Up’ for example.

For single ads you will also have the space to add in ninety characters of time, twenty-five characters of link title, an image and for multi-image ads you have the space for ninety characters of text, forty characters for headline, twenty characters of link description and image with no more that 20% text. While it all may seem like a lot to take in if you have a look at Facebook ads you can see examples of layouts and how your ad will be shown online.

Understand how the reporting works

Now that you’ve set up your audience and your ad, it’s also important to understand how the reporting side of things works to make sure you get the most out of your analytics. Within Facebook’s Ad Manager you will be able to get a clear overview of each advertising campaign so you can check on performance, engagement, videos, website clicks, settings and more. Ideally the more you understand how the metrics work the better.

How To Make Your Facebook Ads Profitable?

While it’s pretty easy to set up Facebook ads, it’s even more important to ensure your ads are successful.

Here’s a few ways to make sure your Facebook ad campaign gets some exposure and drive business leads and ROI.

Make sure your ads are interesting

You’ve probably seen ads that are pretty dull and uninspiring; you’re going to want to make sure when you create your ad your content it is written in such a way that it stands out to your target audience and grabs their attention. You might need an expert copywriter to help you with some of your ad content, however, the outlay in cost could be worth it for the spike in engagement. Make sure your image is interesting and high quality, ensure your headline jumps out and gets noticed, and your description is flawless and engaging.

Invest in your images

People who use Facebook respond to imagery so you’ll want to ensure your image is high quality and stands out for the right reasons. If you don’t have images available or aren’t too crash hot with your design skills invest in a graphic designer who can help you make images for your campaign that will stand out to your audience. Ensure you are using the right size of image and use colors that stand out to your users.

Add in a value proposition in your image

A value proposition can be something like ‘Free Trial’, ‘Free eBook’, ‘Free Shipping’ or even ‘Special Offer’ all of which are enticing and will grab the attention of your user. Just be aware when adding text to the images that Facebook is super strict about having less than 20% text in an image so do yourself a favor and make sure you stick by this rule otherwise your ads will be affected.

Be original

There’s nothing worse that the same old ads being rehashed time and time again. If you want to stand out, you want to create a cool and unique color scheme, engaging text and a call to action that grabs attention. Try and be unique and avoid the temptation to be too safe or predictable.

Hire A Freelance Social Media Marketer To Create The Best Facebook Ad Campaigns For Your Business

Freelancer.com makes hiring the best talent for your startup easy. If you’re looking to tap into content writing, social media marketing or virtual assistant support, you’ll need a talented freelancer with the experience to help get your startup firing on all cylinders.

Freelancer.com has thousands of expert social media freelancers ready and waiting to work on your project with lots of experience to help your business grow and prosper. With freelancers based all around the world, you’ll be spoilt for choice for your next marketing project for your startup.

Whatever freelancer you’re looking for to work on your startup, you’ll find the perfect match for your business needs.

Are you looking for talented marketing & business development support from people who understand marketing, sales and BDM?
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